The role of technology in preventing societal dystopia

The year 2020 has had the world literally on its heels; from a global pandemic that wrecked economic turmoil, a rise in social injustices and worldwide outcry for accountability from governments, corporations and individuals. While some schools of thought admonish calm and a deference to established order, some others clamour for an overhaul of systems and processes as we know it, arguing that a change is necessary to forestall anarchy. The series of recent events globally has also called for a shift in perspective, demanding that we engage all sides in the discourse to chart the best course for the future.

In our attempt to have the conversations that matter and begin the process of remedying society’s many woes; be it a pandemic, racial prejudices or violence in any form, it is important to acknowledge the role of technology in spotlighting the issues. Riding a bus home and watching a Youtube video of mass protests across the world should give us an insight into how we can use that same platform to influence change. We must understand the power in the tools that have enabled the world to cut across borders and unify voices in the advocacy for change, equity and a better future for all. Technology can play a major role in not just curbing trends but influencing change.

How? Multiple perspective capacity

Technology can compound the effects of an event by simply being able to capture the moments and broadcast it to millions across the globe at the click of a button. This unique quality likens it to the supposition that if stars had in-built cameras, we would have been able to capture history from multiple perspectives, giving us the power to make better informed decisions for the benefit of mankind.

Always-on Repository

Information is crucial for advancing societies and institutions but a key component of gathering information is being able to store and retrieve said information when needed. With the passing of time, some data will provide better insight and give context to how an idea may be expanded upon. Thus, the ability to store and retrieve all data at anytime and anywhere becomes important, enabling us to provide a pattern to trends and better insight to make informed decisions. Present day cloud services provide archiving functionalities in stored data that help us detect patterns and similarities.

Identification

Record keeping is an essential part of efficiently driving the affairs of any society or institution but what about proper tagging, and the ability to not only spot events but classify them properly by identifying factors such as; risk levels, starting points, affected areas, response timelines amongst others. Technology can provide the building blocks for systems that will effectively capture and identify events, creating information graphs from which better structures emerge just like search engines do today.

Forecasting

In the domain of knowledge systems, technology provides sufficient data repositories that can be accessed in real time and used to forecast behavioural models and changes, equipping us with the ability to predict and prepare. The role of technology shouldn’t be to replace but to augment just as we see with machine learning.